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Me, from 2009, on the inanity of the Olympics as economic development, and its dark history of being used to purge poor people from city centers. Money Quote from Mike Davis: "The modern Olympics have an especially dark but little-known history. In preparation for the 1936 Olympics, the Nazis ruthlessly purged homeless people and slum dwellers from the areas of Berlin likely to be seen by international visitors. While subsequent Olympics–including those in Mexico City, Athens, and Barcelona–were accompanied by urban renewal and evictions, the 1988 Seoul games were truly unprecedented in the scale of the official crackdown on poor homeowners, squatters, and tenants: as many as 720,000 people were relocated in Seoul and Injon, leading a Catholic NGO to claim that South Korea vied with South Africa as “the country in which eviction by force is most brutal and inhuman.”﻿

Americans dislike rail transit. It is expensive per mile, and mandates crowded living. Robot driven cars iss the answer. Will be here soon and will render this discussion irrellevent. As awlways, free market and free people to the rescue. ﻿

NYT on slum clearance in Brazil ahead of the 2016 Olympics and '14 World Cup: "Meanwhile, residents in some of the favelas, or slums, who face eviction are pulling together and standing their ground, in stark contrast to the preparations for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where authorities easily removed hundreds of thousands of families from the city for the Games. .... But the favela evictions have struck a particular nerve on the streets. A network of activists in 12 cities estimates that as many as 170,000 people may face eviction ahead of the World Cup and the Olympics. In Rio, evictions are taking place in slums across the city, including the Metrô favela near the Maracanã stadium, where residents who refused to move live amid the rubble of bulldozed homes. " http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/world/americas/brazil-faces-obstacles-in-preparations-for-rio-olympics.html?hp﻿

Obama and the Dems in charge has been worse even than Bush and his repubs. The corporate giveaways has increased, now in the name of "stimulus". And transparency has gotten no better, and perhaps even worse. What a disaster. We must drastically cut govt spending.

We spend way too much on many of the things that govt should spend on, and way too much on the things that it should not. That does indeed leave us spending too little on some of the things that we should spend money on. We cannot increase the spending on necessities until we stop paying people to not work and have children that they cannot afford, and paying corporations to grow or not grow this or that crop, and to make this or that "green" product". And we must drastically cut spending on education, starting with elimination of all federal education spending, every cent of which is counter productive.